Legend

Answered

data merge text wrangler

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
October 27, 2017
3 replies
1034 views

Hi,

i have a data merge i am doing, i saved my excel file as a .csv, but none of the commas show. I am using textwrangler and i was wondering if anybody knew how to do a grep search to add a "," after each line break? i added a screenshot below so you can see what i see. i have lots of lists and i am looking for a fast way to add the commas from text wrangler.

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Colin Flashman

This GREP code will add a comma to the end of every line without having to do a two-step procedure:

However, I agree with Jongware, why would you want to do this? If the database has one field, it doesn't need commas, the end of line tells ID's Data Merge that the record has ended and to begin another one.

Jongware

Community Expert

I don't get it. If you replace every line break with a comma, then you have everything on a single long line. How is that better?

JonathanAriasAuthor

Legend

i watched video how the guy had a data merge and he has a .csv file with commas at the end of the entry. that was last year and ever since i had done it that way.

Colin Flashman

Community Expert

if there is more than one field in a database, then there needs to be a separator between the fields. For the data that InDesign can import, CSV will use a comma while TXT will use a tab. The latter is my preference as it allows me to keep commas within a record without a sea of quotation marks to indicate where a field should/should not start.

The header row also dictates how many fields will appear. Take the following example:

title

john,joseph,

joanne,mary,leanne,sarah,

cat,bird,

dad,budgie,

champ,is,a,dog

colin,,

If I save this as a csv or txt file and select it as a data source to InDesign, note how only the first field is imported, despite data being present in other fields:

If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!

J

Jeffrey_Smith

Community Expert

The text file saved from Text Wrangler can be used in a data merge.

winterm

Legend

What if copy/paste everything in a fresh indd doc, do a grep here, and paste the resulting text back?

JonathanAriasAuthor

Legend

hmm. i was hoping to knock it all out from text wrangler at one shot.

i am doing this first:

regex - How to replace line-breaks with commas using grep in TextWrangler? - Stack Overflow

that removes teh breaks, so i do next:

Google Groups

and than i get to where i want to be. and move on to the next list. was just curious as to been able to do it all in one shot so i can work my way down all of the .csv files first, get them prep, and move on to indesign and data merge next.

Colin Flashman

Correct answer

Community Expert

This GREP code will add a comma to the end of every line without having to do a two-step procedure:

However, I agree with Jongware, why would you want to do this? If the database has one field, it doesn't need commas, the end of line tells ID's Data Merge that the record has ended and to begin another one.

If the answer wasn't in my post, perhaps it might be on my blog at colecandoo!

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded